In the preceding entry, “Should the U.S. employ military force against Kaddafi?”, Paul K. adds this comment:

Pro-global democracy liberals and neocons suffer from an alarming failure of the pessimistic imagination.

Sen. Lieberman, 2011: “It’s hard to imagine any new government growing out of this opposition that is worse than Qaddafi.”

Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz, 2003: “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.” (Wolfowitz speaking to House Budget Committee just weeks before the invasion of Iraq, as reported at CBC News.)

LA replies:

And let us remember that Wolfowitz made this remark after a year during which various State Department bodies had predicted massive disorder in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government and presented various practical plans for dealing with it, based on their experience in dealing with societies suffering from natural disasters. The Defense Department shoved aside all these warnings and proposals. The pro-intervention people today, such as Lieberman, such as McCain, such as the neocons and Bushites, have learned nothing. They are more ideologically blinded than old-time Communists, who in fact had some relationship with reality. The democracy promoters have essentially none.